- Gabriele Filippi
- May 2022
- 4 min
- 889 views
Sounds from the void – Hollow Echoes, experimental rock from Italy, debuts with a dense self-titled EP, preceded by the video for the lead track Your Smell Was The Drug.
Created to perform a therapeutic function in the mind of guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Walter A. Lanotte, the act Hollow Echoes becomes real after the summer of 2021, with the involvement of the singer-songwriter Martina Farinola, the drummer Luigi Pascuccio, the keyboardist and multi-instrumentalist Francesco Stefanelli and bassist and guitarist Francesco Schiavone.
Thus this band makes its appearance in this astral plane, a bit the result of chance, a bit adaptation of characters in the species, a bit like a new stage of an evolutionary process.
Propagating undisturbed between modern guitars and post-grunge aesthetic structures, these Echoes seem to have no boundaries, flying between keyboards that paint distant soundscapes, and quivering over neurotic bass lines; they fluctuate among shouted voices and faint whispers, while they dream among Victorian violins, treading the pace pursued by electronic percussion.
And they also do it by means of introspective texts with multiple levels of reading. In short, they are not (only) rock, pop, electronic, or funk. The light-dark supernova that we imagine to have been unleashed primeval by Lanotte finds an impeccable vector in the vocal wedge of Frinola. Pascuccio, with his drumsticks, seems to play on our skin, even if on those of his drumkit. Stefanelli summarizes the imaginative eclecticism of this sound/project. And Schiavone gives vibrance and vehemence through his fretboards.
In November 2021 the formation debuted in its first concert, in Piazza Zirioni in Acquaviva Delle Fonti (Bari, Italy). The first feedback received from this rosy musical proposal was so positive, so much so that at the beginning of 2022 the band entered the maze of the recording studio for its recording debut.
We are talking about the self-titled EP Hollow Echoes, preceded by the single “Your Smell Was The Drug”, released on all platforms on April 8th. On April 22, exactly two weeks, the video clip of the lead track was also released. You can find it on their YouTube channel right here.
The cover for Hollow Echoes was created by Luana F. Belsito, known as @wallypain on Instagram, a talented graphic designer author of comics with over 11k followers, while the band’s logo bears the signature of the equally talented graphic, web, UI designer, and illustrator Jasmine F. Mascoli.
The Echoes would hardly have expected a better debut: in two weeks they have already reached the threshold of 30k listeners between streams and views.
Recorded and produced between Altrementi Sound in Acquaviva, Italy (winner of the Places Comuni Puglia competition) and Marco Fischetti’s Death Star Studio (producer among others and Gulliver / Giò Sada’s musician) in Cassano Delle Murge, Italy, this album is a journey through dark caverns, cryptic sounds, and crystalline echoes.
Able to give delicate caresses, hopeful capitulations, unbridgeable losses, and atavistic bewilderments, the EP unwinds along the common thread of time.
Explicitly mentioned only in “If You Are Kronos”, a track inspired by Greek mythology and by Francisco Goya’s painting Saturn Devouring His Son, each song deals with this theme from different angles.
In “Your Smell Was The Drug” it is the time of a love that resulted in a toxic relationship. In “Counting The Days” is the extraordinary time of the pandemic and lockdowns, in which staying active or falling passive is a fluctuating choice.
“So Many Hours”, a track inspired by Samuel Beckett’s play “Waiting for Godot”, talks about apathy and the passage of time, drowned in boredom.
One of the most interesting acts we have had the pleasure of discovering in many months now, Hollow Echoes is a band to be certainly kept on our own radar.
Because if this is the premise, the sum of Lanotte, Farinola, Pascuccio, Stefanelli, and Schiavone is, in our humble opinion, destined to mark its path. 
- .: Nova MUSIC blog // May 2022
Listen now to Hollow Echoes, the latest EP, Video by Hollow Echoes, available in streaming on all major digital platforms. You can find your favorite one via distrokid.com
You can also discover Hollow Echoes' music by listening to our playlist NOVA ERA, a weekly rotation featuring an eclectic selection of artists covered by the Nova MUSIC blog.